Cocktails 1926

Archibald Motley’s ‘Cocktails’ is an oil painting, about the size of a small window. Look at how Motley works with these soft lilacs and pinks, contrasting with the deep, rich black of the waiter’s uniform; I wonder if he started with a dark ground, building up the image in layers? You can imagine him, maybe listening to some hot jazz, deciding to make the bodies of the women turn into soft, rounded forms. I feel for Motley here; you can see him thinking about how to make a painting that's both representational and expressionistic. The challenge of balancing color, form, and narrative in one go! He's in dialogue with all those artists who were thinking about modern life, like Kirchner and the German Expressionists, but with his own spin. Motley, like all of us, is part of a big, ongoing conversation, across art history; he’s riffing on what came before, trying to make something new. Paintings like this don’t tell you what to think, but make you feel a certain way, you know?